Babies on boats

Hope you enjoyed, or at least endured that overplayed April Fools day joke. That’s what happens when you have too much time together trapped on a boat in the tropics. You start to hatch ridiculous plans and get excited about playing stupid jokes on the internet. We just couldn’t help it, Jeff had been setting up the spike for weeks. Seriously though, we probably did just jinx ourselves. Well now that we got that out of the way we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming. But while we’re on the topic of babies…

We’ve reached the phase where carefully crafted baby announcements seem to be popping up on our screens every time we plug in. We see the tiny speck in the sonogram grow. We watch beautiful bellies bulge, the excitement of our friends palpable as the weeks pass. New parents, eyes heavy from lack of sleep, grin lovingly at the bundle of soft flesh in their arms. My newsfeed is now saturated with episode after episode of “Kids say the darndest things” (and let’s be real, they do say the darndest things) or tips and tricks for getting that fussy baby to sleep for more than an hour at a time or in depth articles on the latest child-rearing philosophies. Words of support and encouragement ring out like a comforting hum, a beautiful note held in unison. If my biological clock was ticking like a clock before…well now it’s reverberating like a gong.

Within the past year and a half of cruising I’ve started reading other blogs, gravitating towards those that chronicle the journey of other young couples on boats. Jeff was more tapped into the “cruising blog” world in the lead up to our departure. It’s a relatively new fixation for me. In this same timespan many of the cruising couples in our age range have either had children or recently announced a pregnancy.

These brave souls go on passages while pregnant, some women spending the duration with their head in the galley sink while their husbands single-hand the boat. They cruise around with newborns and toddlers who are carefully tucked into foam and blanket nests secured with lee cloths, like a fragile egg in an egg drop contraption. They wash diapers in 8 foot seas and breastfeed infants in 40 knot gales. They deliver their babies in foreign ports and arrange play dates with locals and other cruising couples. Like all parents, they delight in each stage of development, be it physical, mental, emotional or cultural. Some are quick to criticize for their apparent “irresponsibility” for raising children on a boat on the sea in a foreign land. All should be heralded for their passion, perseverance and courage. These are resilient babies and resilient parents.

I can’t help thinking that living on a boat is preparing us, in many small ways, for the challenges of raising a child. We are accustomed to things falling apart. We are accustomed to things taking longer than anticipated and never turning out as expected. We are well versed in sharing responsibilities depending on our skills, desires and energy levels. We’re used to pulling shifts during the night and enduring uncomfortable situations with limited sleep. Raising a child while cruising, however, would bring it to a whole other level. It’s hard to imagine maintaining a boat, navigating new waters and new cultures, raising a child and keeping my sanity in tact. Some couples make it happen…some couples even make it look easy.

For other couples, the challenge of managing boat life with the challenge of raising a little person (or multiple little people), results in either a temporary or permanent hiatus from the boat (since taking a hiatus from the child is not a particularly viable or desirable option). You gotta do what you gotta do. I am continually in awe of our new and seasoned parent friends out there – on a boat or otherwise. Not sure if we could manage boat + baby, but you never know.

If you are hankering to read about some adorable boat babies, I’ve got your hookup:

• Alma on SV Sea Raven, with parents Sabine and Terry who we met in La Paz 
• Jari on SV Bettie del Mar, with parents Attila and Vlad
• Lyra and Cora on SV Rebel Heart, with parents Charlotte and Eric
• Isla and sisters (twins!) Mira and Haven over at Windtraveler, with parents Brittney and Scott 
• Rocket on SV Adamastor, with parents Jess and James

There are lots of supremely cool boat kids too:

• Ronan on SV Wendy Ellen with his amazing parents Zach and Suzie who we met in La Paz (awaiting baby #2!)
• Elias and Eric on SV Galactic with parents Alisa and Mike –
• Zada on SV Eyoni with parents Ethan and Nancy
• Niall, Mairen and Siobhan on SV Totem with parents Behan and Jamie

Happy reading : ).